Emma G. Gallegos

After a jury locked and a judge declared a mistrial yesterday in the case against a teen who shot a gay student in front of other classmates at his Oxnard high school, prosecutors vowed to push for a retrial. But experts — and the prosecutors themselves admit — that a second trial may not be any easier than the first.

Christin Briles, the mother of a 7-year-old boy thrown off a boat by his dad last week, is firing back at the dad who claimed it was all good, clean fun. Although Christin was not aboard the tour in Newport Harbor when the incident — and her son — went down, both of her sons have backed up the accounts of other witnesses, who said that Sloane Briles was drunk and fighting with his girlfriend before he threw his son overboard.

In tonight's Extra, Extra, rumors of Tony Danza's demise have been greatly exaggerated, Gaddafi has a Hollywood connection and Frank McCourt receives a record offer for the Dodgers. Plus: Keep up with us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter: @LAist @LAistFood @LAistSports.

A business executive in Orange County confessed this week to killing his partner and sending phony e-mails from his account, so that his family would think that he was in Africa. The plan of confessed murderer Edward Shin worked for a while, according to the Los Angeles Times. But this December Shin wrote that his partner Christopher Ryan Smith was going into the Congo and Rwanda, and that's when the story began to unravel.

Are you addicted to tanning? If you're under 18, you may only have a few months left to get your fix. When the dark days of January arrive, it may no longer be legal for teens to don the goggles and go under the ultraviolet lights.

A man who hacked into the computer of more than 100 women, read their emails, spied on them through webcams, obtained nude pictures and in some cases threatened to release them publicly was sentenced to six years in prison yesterday. Federal Judge George King handed down the stiff penalty to Luis Mijangos, 32, of Santa Ana that he said was a warning to other hackers, The Associated Press reports.

A squirrel narrowly avoided the fate of so many mastodons and saber-toothed cats eons before, when it was rescued from the La Brea Tar Pits. A worker from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art saved the creature from the tar pits a few weeks ago and called the California Wildlife Center near Calabasas to rehabilitate the creature, The Acorn Reports.

See a bee in your backyard? Rob and Chelsea McFarland are begging you not to call the exterminator. The westside couple, according to Culver City Patch, is on a crusade to legalize beekeeping in Los Angeles city limits and bring the good news about bees to the masses (who might only hear horror stories like this).

An Orange County woman learned the risks of being a stoner mommy the hard way. Last week, the Ladera Ranch mother put in a panicked (and perhaps rightfully paranoid) call to the local sheriff's department, requesting the help of paramedics. It turns out her 16-month-old baby had mistaken a loaded bong for a baby bottle and downed the contents The OC Weekly Reports.

It's not just your imagination: Angelenos are more than 50 percent more likely to get into a crash than everyone else nationally. That means while everyone else is only colliding once every 10 years, our individual drivers get into collisions every 6.6 years on average. The data comes from a survey of claims in the 200 largest U.S. cities from January 2008 to December 2009 put out by Allstate.

If you are one of the 100 or so people who bought their Sunset Junction ticket at Origami Vinyl, you're in luck. The same is true for ticketholders that bought their tickets the Silverlake Farmer's Market. Over at their blog, the Echo Park record shop is now promising to refund the money you paid for the tickets and service fees: "Now, at long last, everything has been ironed out and we are happy to announce that refunds will be issued."

A mountain lion kitten striking out on his own was killed Tuesday morning, while trying to cross the 405 just south of the Getty Center. The National Park Service has been following the movement of this mountain lion born in the Santa Monica Mountains in May 2010 and equipped with a GPS collar. They named him "P-18."